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Learn ยท FundamentalsCigar Fundamentals
Fundamentals is the shelf for what a cigar is and what it costs: how the leaf inside is built, why one cigar hits harder than another, where the price comes from, what the law and the carriers allow, and what the health research actually measured.
Wrappers, growing countries, and sizes each have their own shelf (wrappers, origins, sizes and shapes). This one covers the rest of the object and the whole business of paying for it.
Read in this order
- How to buy cigars: the shop, online, and auctions. Samplers, bundles, and what a cigar should cost.
- What cigars actually cost: MSRP vs street vs sale, what is inside the number, and why price is not evidence.
- Strength vs body vs flavor: three different dials, and they move independently.
- Nicotine, without the sick: why cigars hit hard, and how to keep a strong one from ruining a night.
What's inside
- Ligero, seco, viso: primings. Where a leaf sat on the plant, and what that does to strength.
- Long vs short filler: whole leaves vs chopped pieces, and where the Cuban sandwich fits.
- Fermentation and aging: what happens in the pile vs what happens in the box.
- What is a puro: one-country cigars, and why most cigars aren't.
- Handmade vs machine-made: the all-tobacco line, and why this site stays on the handmade side of it.
- Cigar vs cigarillo vs little cigar: whole leaf, a pressed sheet, or a cigarette in costume. The three questions that sort them.
- Gauging strength before you buy: the blend copy, the country, and the line name predict the nicotine. Wrapper color lies.
Buying and price
- How many cigars come in a box?: 20 to 25, an 1865 tax law, and why the 5-pack is usually the smarter buy.
- State tobacco taxes: the federal cap, the three state structures, and why the same box costs different money.
- Gray market cigars: what an authorized dealer is, where sideways stock comes from, and which cheap deals to walk past.
- Are cigar of the month clubs worth it?: what a club really costs, the MSRP trick behind "retail value", and when a self-built sampler wins.
- Cigar box splits: the group-buy math, the trust problem, and the cigars that arrive dry.
- Buying cigars on vacation: tourist traps, duty-free math, and what customs actually allows home.
Verdicts on this site are judged at street price, never at the deal price paid. The rule and the exceptions are laid out on From the Deck at how I set street price.
Shipping and the law
- Where cigars can and can't be shipped: the three layers, the states worth naming, and the retailer's longer list.
- Why your online cigar order was canceled: age verification, carrier rules, payment, and what the PACT Act actually does.
- The FDA and premium cigars: the court rulings that carved premium handmades out of the deeming rule, and the eight-part definition.
Health
Every claim on these pages traces to cigar-specific research or says plainly that it doesn't.
- Cigars vs cigarettes: what the health evidence actually says about two products wearing one label, cited so you can check it.
- Are cigars addictive?: the warnings run on cigarette data. What studies of nicotine without the cigarette found.
- Do you inhale cigars? and how often is too often? sit on neighboring shelves and belong in the same reading.
Keep reading
- Anatomy of a cigar: the parts, before the primings
- How a cigar is made: seed to box
- Wrappers, origins, sizes and shapes: the other three shelves that describe the object